Just to cheer everyone up a bit...

http://sobadsogood.com/2012/04/02/meme-alert-fonts-expressed-as-cats/

I want to take Helvetica and Apple Chauncery home with me...

Cats? I've always read your screen name as Scooby Doo saying his name, so I just figured you were a dog person.

I want to take Helvetica and Apple Chauncery home with me...

I'll take Dingbat.

Off topic, but someone may have some experience about this. One of my cats fell into some varnish type thing (somewhere in the neigbourhood). I washed him immediately, but I think it didn't entirely come off. The next day I called a pet shop who came and got him and took him to the shop to be cleaned. When he came back a few hours later, he was completely messed up, I mean mentally. He would jump suddenly and seemingly uncontrollably, every 15 minutes to half an hour. He didn't sleep all night. A vet came the next morning, said he's traumatised and gave him a shot of vitamin C. He then fell asleep. Now the cat is totally quiet, lost all his confidence and just sits the whole day, he's been like this for a few days now. He's eating and drinking again, I had to literally put food and water in his mouth the first few days.

My feeling is that he is like this from an experience he had at the pet shop, I think they were rough with him, I don't think this is because of the varnish. Before he went to the shop he was fine, he came back totally messed up. I'm writing here because maybe someone has seen an animal traumatised before. What I really want to know is if this could be a permanent thing. It would be such a shame, this was such an outgoing and happy cat before and now he is so sad. One other thing apart from walking in a very timid way now, he also keeps shaking his legs off as if there is water on it, even though it's been 5 days since he was cleaned up at the pet shop.

Off topic, but someone may have some experience about this. One of my cats fell into some varnish type thing (somewhere in the neigbourhood). I washed him immediately, but I think it didn't entirely come off. The next day I called a pet shop who came and got him and took him to the shop to be cleaned. When he came back a few hours later, he was completely messed up, I mean mentally. He would jump suddenly and seemingly uncontrollably, every 15 minutes to half an hour. He didn't sleep all night. A vet came the next morning, said he's traumatised and gave him a shot of vitamin C. He then fell asleep. Now the cat is totally quiet, lost all his confidence and just sits the whole day, he's been like this for a few days now. He's eating and drinking again, I had to literally put food and water in his mouth the first few days.

My feeling is that he is like this from an experience he had at the pet shop, I think they were rough with him, I don't think this is because of the varnish. Before he went to the shop he was fine, he came back totally messed up. I'm writing here because maybe someone has seen an animal traumatised before. What I really want to know is if this could be a permanent thing. It would be such a shame, this was such an outgoing and happy cat before and now he is so sad. One other thing apart from walking in a very timid way now, he also keeps shaking his legs off as if there is water on it, even though it's been 5 days since he was cleaned up at the pet shop.

Had a cat traumatized once. Affected all the cats in the house. They started fighting amongst themselves, hissing, jumping all sorts of on edge behaviour. It passed. Over time as life went back to normal the traumatized cat learned to relax and trust again and the rest followed.

There are no problems with cats that cannot be solved for 25 cents.

Our cat has had renal failure for a year, and when he's not feeling well, things like a bath can affect him as though he's traumatized for a few days.  Eventually he returns to normal.  We just love him and snuggle a little more, and give him more treats to help make him more comfortable.  

Whatever that substance was, it could have mixed with the bath soap and temporarily irritated his skin, which scared him more than an ordinary bath would.

Yes that's a possibility. I've been recommended to give him vitamin b1, which I'm doing. According to the vet it's good for nerve trauma (if I understood him correctly, the conversation wasn't in English).

This is a photo of the cat taken a few months ago sitting with his sister, he's the one on the right.

Ok, I'll give it a try, thanks Karimala 

adorable cat fonts, rubyroo - thanks for posting the link

VERY happy to hear how potassium supplement has helped Karimala's kitty.

About Microstock Posts' cat shaking legs off....   

-- A few summers ago, my older cat put on her invisibility cloak and slipped into room where I had a found-cat who was being treated for ear mites.

-- Found-cat was re-united with her family, but ever since then my cat will occasionally shake her head as if she has something in her ear, even though her ears have been checked and re-checked and re-re-checked....

Hope to see updates how traumatized kitty is bouncing back...

adorable cat fonts, rubyroo - thanks for posting the link

VERY happy to hear how potassium supplement has helped Karimala's kitty.

About Microstock Posts' cat shaking legs off....  

-- A few summers ago, my older cat put on her invisibility cloak and slipped into room where I had a found-cat who was being treated for ear mites.

-- Found-cat was re-united with her family, but ever since then my cat will occasionally shake her head as if she has something in her ear, even though her ears have been checked and re-checked and re-re-checked....

Hope to see updates how traumatized kitty is bouncing back...

No idea where you are located but you can easily treat this yourself in a couple of ways.

Ear mites might not be found by the vet if they are located very deep in the ear or if there are very few of them in there. Of course the cat could have other ear issues (bacterial infection etc.) that cause discomfort.

However if you mix ear mite cat with non-ear mite cat it only goes one way... - I think there is a high chance that yours has ear mites (hopefully I'm wrong though).

It's not a big drama with the mites as you already know. A shot at the vet usually does the trick.

If you treat your cat for fleas anyways you might consider getting Revolution for cats because it takes care of many things a cat might have (such as mange, ear mites even lice and more). Two treatments (months) should wipe out the mites.

Or you can go the natural route and use mineral oil from the supermarket and use a little dropper and put several drops into the kitties ear. Not very comfortable but not aggressive either. It won't burn or anything. It breaks up the greasy spots in the ear and literally drowns the mites. After dripping it into the cats ears gently massage the oil into the ear canal - don't worry it won't go into the brain or anything, just don't be rough. Do this for a minute and then let your baby shake its head to whack out the gooey stuff (beware, chunks might be flying all over the place - don't do this in your bedroom etc.).

You can use q-tips dipped in mineral oil to clean out the remaining black chunks from the ears.

It does require constant follow up "treatments" to break up the breeding cycle of the mites but it's the most natural way.

Good luck!

thanks for the laugh, michaeldb

and thanks for that very detailed advice about natural treatment for ear mites in kitty, click-click
It certainly seems worth looking into

No problem.

I can't stress enough how important it is to do online research for non-emergency pet treatment.

Often the vets run unnecessary tests for something quite obvious and it's never wrong to educate yourself about checking the health of your pet yourself.

We lost an indoor cat due to a injection-site fibrosarcoma (cancer) because she got vaccinated for rabies over 10 years ago. It's happening quite often but the number of cases of that happening are not enough to consider the vaccines unsafe. However, it takes only one to be YOUR pet that gets it and it's just one too many...

I don't want to argue whether to vaccinate your pets or not (in some areas it's the law AND absolutely necessary!) but it's always good to know the risk of any sort of treatment for your beloved friends - so you can act as soon as you see something wrong.